Megyn Kelly Meets With Donald Trump

It was a high-level summit meeting above Midtown Manhattan, the latest twist in a story of public acrimony and private courtship.

Donald J. Trump, the leading Republican candidate for president, and Megyn Kelly, a Fox News anchor, spoke for roughly an hour on Wednesday, their first interaction in months. By day’s end, the two had reached a tentative truce in a feud that has captivated the political class and crystallized questions about Mr. Trump’s attitude toward women and the news media.

The meeting was requested by Ms. Kelly, whose questioning of Mr. Trump’s derogatory remarks about women in the first Republican debate in August prompted him to attack her as “crazy” and “overrated.” And it signaled the possible end of a standoff strange even by the standards of a confounding election year: the Republican front-runner refusing to appear in prime time with one of Fox News’s biggest stars.

The détente comes at a critical time for both. Mr. Trump, whose pugilism has been a hallmark of his political rise, is moving to soften his image ahead of a potential general election campaign in the fall. Ms. Kelly has said that she will consider leaving Fox News after her contract ends next year, even as she faced the prospect of an election year without access to the top ratings draw on television, Mr. Trump.

Their sit-down was preceded by a series of conversations between Mr. Trump and Roger Ailes, the powerful chairman of Fox News, about the candidate’s strained relationship with Ms. Kelly.

“We met for about an hour, just the two of us, and had a chance to clear the air,” Ms. Kelly said on her program on Wednesday night. But while she described Mr. Trump as “gracious,” she said that the candidate had not yet committed to an interview with her, adding, “I hope we will have news to announce on that soon.”

There were other signs that the meeting, which took place in Mr. Trump’s 26th-floor executive office at Trump Tower, was a step forward, if not a full embrace. Afterward, Mr. Trump ate lunch with Mr. Ailes at the Fox News offices on Avenue of the Americas. And in an interview with another Fox anchor, Sean Hannity, Mr. Trump described Ms. Kelly as “very, very nice.”

“Maybe it was time, or maybe she felt it was time,” Mr. Trump said of the meeting. “I give her a lot of credit for, you know, doing what she did, because I don’t know — that took a certain amount. So let’s see what happens, but it was very nice.”

Mending ties with Mr. Trump allows Ms. Kelly the chance to prove that she can land a major interview subject — a “get” in television parlance — even amid tough circumstances. For Mr. Trump, the reconciliation could help improve his relationship with female voters, a majority of whom say in opinion polls that they hold negative views of him.

Still, the meeting amounted to a striking turnaround for candidate and anchor alike. Ms. Kelly, in a recent interview, acknowledged that Mr. Trump’s attacks on her had “gotten very ugly” and started to affect her personal life. “I don’t like putting my kids to bed and having to think about that vitriol,” she told Katie Couric in a public interview in Manhattan last week.

Ms. Kelly has also been candid about the difficulties that the feud has created for Fox News, one of the nation’s most influential news sources among conservative voters. “Fox is placed in a very difficult position because they have one of their lead news anchors under attack, and yet what are they going to do?” she told Ms. Couric. “They can’t ban the presidential front-runner on the Republican side from coming on the channel.”

Fox News has defended Ms. Kelly, at one point accusing Mr. Trump of harboring an “extreme, sick obsession” with her. But the network will face a different environment in the general election, when many viewers may expect the channel’s personalities to show allegiance to the Republican nominee.

Mr. Trump is looking ahead, too. After establishing a bullying, showmanlike approach to campaigning, Mr. Trump is in the midst of overhauling his team’s message and approach as he prepares for a potential general election before a more moderate and diverse electorate.

Mr. Trump recently hired a seasoned political hand, Paul J. Manafort, whose portfolio has grown beyond his original assignment as a delegate wrangler at this summer’s Republican national convention. Now, Mr. Manafort is taking a bigger role in Mr. Trump’s messaging and news media strategy.

This week, Mr. Trump has sought to soften his image — or, in his words, “I will be so presidential you won’t believe it.” The shift, Mr. Trump said Tuesday night, has been urged by his family members, who were sitting next to him as he made the remarks during a live town hall-style event on CNN.

With his wife, Melania, at his side, Mr. Trump radiated a paternal beam as his four grown children attested to his skills as a father and mentor. For home viewers, the message was underscored, intentionally or not, by a prominent Twitter hashtag placed by CNN at the bottom of the screen: #TrumpFamily.

For Ms. Kelly, Mr. Trump’s CNN event may have resonated in other ways. It edged “The Kelly File” in Tuesday night’s prominent 9 p.m. time slot, according to Nielsen data, drawing 162,000 more viewers.

Despite the complications, Ms. Kelly’s feud with Mr. Trump has proved a boon for her career.

She is among the most coveted stars on cable news during an extraordinary election year, just as she nears the end of her contract. In a first for a leading Fox News personality, she has been praised by the leading Democratic presidential nominee, Hillary Clinton, who called her a “superb journalist,” and embraced by the very news media elites, including Ms. Couric, whom Fox News made its name skewering.

Ms. Kelly has attributed her success, in part, to her role as a rare symbol of Trump resistance in television news. “I’m the second-highest-rated show in all of cable news, and I haven’t had Trump on in seven months,” she said on her show several weeks ago. “It can be done without him, too.”

Maggie Haberman and Nick Corasaniti contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A15 of the New York edition with the headline: A Trump-Kelly Sit-Down Yields a Tentative Truce. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe